LATINA CITTA’ INVISIBILE
A photographic fake by Alessandro Bavari Freely inspired by Italo Calvino's invisible cities.
How would the city of Latina reveal itself through Marco Polo's gaze, if it had been unfolded in all its infinite facets by Italo Calvino in his Invisible Cities? Would Kublai Khan have been captivated by it?
The Invisible Cities could be regarded as one of Calvino's most unbounded works, constructed over several years, abandoned and then revisited, reorganized multiple times into sections dedicated to seasons, the five senses, animals, and mythological heroes.
But Calvino at times is also driven by creative compulsion, drawing inspiration from both the everyday and his extensive travels, fantasizing between ideal cities and dystopian cities, much like the equally creative writing of an A.I. prompt destined for image generation.
And fate would have it that the algorithm used to create this project inspired by Calvino's work is called MidJourney.
Relying on Artificial Intelligence is like whispering phrases and words of Dadaist origin into a vast algorithmic ear, waiting for it to produce something unexpected and astonishingly dreamlike.
Therefore, it's a psychedelic journey that oscillates between the mystical and the mathematical dimensions, where the intense symbiotic exchange between individual imagination and the neural network of A.I. takes on forms that are sometimes entirely realistic, but also, conversely, free from any aesthetic superstructure, capable of blending classical academism with the chaotic pop of the web and the consequences of calculation errors. This often yields entirely irrational and unpredictable results without any logical process, ultimately defining a new method and figurative aesthetics.
In conclusion, paraphrasing a statement by Orson Welles, A.I. is much more than a generator of visions; it is a means through which images reach us from another world.
